4 Iowa alums longlisted for National Book Award | Iowa Now

Four University of Iowa graduates are listed among the many authors being thought of for the distinguished National Book Award.

The longlist consists of 10 titles every in 5 classes: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and younger folks’s literature; finalists are introduced in October and the winners in November.

The Iowa writers whose books have been positioned on the longlist:

Fiction

Angela Flournoy, who earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2011, for The Wilderness. Flournoy is the writer of The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award; shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize; and chosen as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers, an Indie Next List choose, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Kevin Moffett, who earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2005, for Only Son. Moffett is the writer of two brief story collections, in addition to The Silent History, a story app for cellular gadgets. His work has been awarded the National Magazine Award for Fiction, the Nelson Algren Literary Award, and a Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing from the National Endowment of the Arts.

Joy Williams, who earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1965, for The Pelican Child. Williams is the writer of 5 earlier novels—together with Harrow, a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; The Quick and the Dead, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and State of Grace, a Finalist for the National Book Award.

Nonfiction

Yiyun Li, who earned an MS in interdisciplinary research in 2000, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2005, and an MFA in English (Nonfiction Writing Program) in 2005, for Things in Nature Merely Grow. Li is the writer of a number of works of fiction, together with Wednesday’s Child; The Book of Goose; Must I Go; Where Reasons End; Kinder Than Solitude; Gold Boy, Emerald Girl; The Vagrants; and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, in addition to the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life.

Winners of the National Book Award competition, which is run by the National Book Foundation, will probably be introduced Nov. 19.